This is a boring blog!

No, nobody's complained, that's just my opinion and as I'm writing this blog, I can confidently claim the majority view. Let's face it, a travel blog with no travel is about as good a sedative as a hot afternoon at a village cricket match. About as exciting as a wet Wednesday afternoon in Wigan. Not that I've got anything particular against mid-week activity undertaken in inclement weather. It's Wigan that's the problem. It wouldn't be a problem in, say, Barbados or Hawaii but Wigan, by comparison, has got a long way - uphill - to go before it comes close to being on anyone's list of Places to Visit on Early Closing Day. Star Trek probably wouldn't have gained the cult following it has if Cap'n Kirk had started too many episodes with "This is the log of the Starship Enterprise, laid up for yet another week in the dry dock on Alpha Centauri."

Let's review the content so far. I do this for new readers who've just dropped by, as my reader in the USA flogs through this drivel every week with loyalty verging on Unnatural Interest - only joking, Yank! The occasional visitor from Poland is also appreciated -Witaj mój przyjacielu! - but the sole "hit" from Romania happened to co-incide with our daughter being in Bucharest for the weekend, so I don't think I can count that on the scorecard of International Interest.

So, some droning on about how I managed to get 55kgs of tent from the storeroom to the roofrack without dropping it and, unbelievably, a photo of Daphne's back end cluttered up with plastic boxes...wot? I mean, FFS! Is this all there is? When we wrote the blog last year, we read somewhere that we should include all the things that go wrong, all the bad bits as well as the good stuff and the pretty pictures as readers "like" to hear how It's All Gone to Hell in a Handcart. So, I must apologise for not dropping the tent off the lash-up of a ramp. I'd like to say "It nearly happened", but actually ended up being a completely uneventful event other than for the doing up of the fixing bolts. We live alongside a country lane frequented by almost no-one except dog walkers and Sunday strollers. The latter group tend to be more refined persons - well, the gentlemen wear hats not hoods, which is almost an indication of aristocracy around here. And it was a small group of the latter that were treated to my loudly voiced opinion on the state of the universe, God and the weather when I skinned my freezing knuckles and sent a vital nut spinning into the middle distance to land in the previously-mentioned gravel, where flying metalwork goes to disappear forever. They might have been outraged but, then again, they might be representatives of our new but rapidly expanding Polish community and were just entertained. If they come back equipped with folding chairs and picnics, I'll try to be less profane since they seemed to have quite an interest in what was going on. Perhaps it was the metal detector that did it. I wasn't even aware that they were there and listening to my cursing, having earphones on an' all. Didn't find the nut, either.


Regarding the point of all this, there's not much to report this week. Again. I sorted out the paperwork to import Daphne via Tangier which is made a lot easier by visiting Tim Cullis' excellent guide. Find it here: http://www.morocco-knowledgebase.net

There's always something that can be improved, and in an attempt to improve the view of the navigation display I made this little gadget from some scrap aluminium:

OK, so what? Well, we found OSM mapping quite useful, unlike the rear view mirror which is largely redundant except for seeing how big our dust cloud is. Rather than remove the mirror, which is easy to do as Sue proved to my annoyance last year, we decided to make it comply with our "everything must be dual purpose" philosophy:

So here's our new Head-Up Display satnav. This lets us both see what's going on, or Sue can use the Garmin while I keep an eye on OSM. Any chance of disagreements over the navigation now removed...yeah, right.

 Anyway, despite my original misgivings, it doesn't block the view forwards as much as I'd thought and I don't need glasses to read it.

I'm getting interested in a New Noise that only happens when Daphne is running on smooth roads and the transmission is cold. It might be a wheel bearing or one of the diffs, but it's difficult to isolate from the driving seat. This isn't helped by the fact that I'm hightone deaf in my right ear, the result of a combination of firing guns without ear defenders and a career in and around aeroplanes and noisy jet engines. My time associated with Chinook helicopters probably either trashed my eardrums or was a natural defence mechanism since six years in the lefthand front seat were accompanied by a loud whining noise from the other side of the aircraft. I initially thought this was the front rotor gearbox but since it was often there before the engines were started.....This whining, which became more high-pitched when we began recruiting female aircrew has left me with a permanent disability and an aversion to pilots with t*ts. ;-)

An oil change has to be done before we leave, even though the present fill has got 3000 miles left in it. There, that's something for you to look forward to next week. Bet you can't wait. Still, less than 4 weeks to go before we head South.

 Sue did manage to lighten the load a bit - see previous regarding rearrangements in the kitchen department -  by transferring all the foodie stuff  that was in glass jars into plastic pots, but I still reckon we're taking too much. I tried to point out that folk in Morocco didn't seem undernourished and that we could probably replenish the larder fairly regularly and didn't need to fill all available space - that I need, obviously, for More Important (Man) Stuff - with comestibles which will  probably be available en route. After some negotiation we have reached a fair compromise. Sue will organise the feeding arrangements and I will shut up. Anyone seen my coat?